The Year of YouTube Advertising

The wildest crop yet of online campaign commercials

2010 has been the liveliest year yet for online campaign ads, as one low-budget clip after another draws enormous audiences through the sheer power of being different. And by different, we mean weird. Some of the ads that took off online originally aired on television, but others took the opposite route: They were posted to the Web first, sometimes at a length far too long for a TV spot, and then appeared free of charge on political talk shows after they picked up enough buzz to qualify as news. Some never left the Internet at all, achieving the sort of fame reserved for dramatic chipmunks and Star Wars kids.

There are two distinct but related phenomena going on here. One is advertising that was carefully designed to go viral: deliberately off-kilter commercials like Carly Fiorina’s “demon sheep” ad in the California senate race. And then there are the outsider artists whose ads simply reflect the fact that it’s easier than ever for anyone to create and post a video for the whole world to see, whether or not he knows what a conventional campaign ad looks like. The most extreme example is Basil Marceaux, a perennial crank candidate in Tennessee, whose bizarre homemade commercials got attention from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Colbert Report.

The new wave of online ads has provoked a wide spectrum of responses, from praise to derision to fear. The most overwrought reaction came from MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, after the Alabama congressional candidate Rick Barber released an ad that invoked the American Revolution. It was standard-issue populist iconography, but Olbermann attacked it as “a call to treason” and declared that the candidate should be jailed.

Here are some of the most memorable clips of the season thus far:

Debut Date: January

The Candidate: Dwight McKenna, Democrat

The Office: coroner, Orleans Parish

The Setup: The incumbent has abused his office to advance a lucrative trade in human organs. To illustrate the scandal, here is a 30-second Frankenstein movie.

The Defining Moment: “‘Igor!’ ‘Yes, Doctor?’ ‘I need a heart, a spleen, and a liver for tonight’s sale!’”

Debut Date: February

The Candidate: Carly Fiorina, Republican

The Office: U.S. senator, California

The Setup: Tom Campbell claims to be a fiscal conservative. Actually, he’s a big-spending, debt-swelling, tax-hiking wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The Defining Moment: Campbell as a creepy sheep with demonic red eyes, quietly devouring the flock.

Debut Date: May

The Candidate: Dale Peterson, Republican

The Office: agriculture commissioner, Alabama

The Setup: A plain-talkin’ angry man with a shotgun is ready to clear the thugs and criminals out of the agriculture department. Also: Illegal aliens are invading the country, my opponent is a crook, and his supporters are stealing my yard signs.

The Defining Moment: “I’ve been a farmer! A businessman! A cop! A marine during Vietnam! So listen up!”

The Setup: Finally, a candidate who promises to move the capitol from Nashville to Chattanooga, so he can clear away all the backroom politics. (“It will probably take a year or two.”) He will also cease all traffic stops, “remove the gold-fringed flag from our society,” and plant “vegitation” (sic) so we can turn it into ethanol and “cash it in for gas or money.”

The Defining Moment: “Hello, citizens. This is BasilMarceaux.com.”

Debut Date: September

The Candidate: John Dennis, Republican

The Office: U.S. representative, 8th District of California

The Setup: It’s a Tea Party–themed Wizard of Oz, featuring a “Wall-Street wizard” and wicked witch Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whom Dennis melts with a bucket of water labeled “freedom.”